One of the items in the industrial automation news this week was Foxboro’s 100th anniversary.  A lot of history there, and I’m sure I must have come across one of the original control systems on a site visit or two J   Seriously though, I joke about companies having antique control systems in place, but how many of your sites have some dusty relics still on active duty?  Many of the original proprietary systems where fairly simple, designed for a harsh environment and did the job very well.  There are still many legacy systems in service, and many companies are looking to eek out as much life from them as they can.   Some of MatrikonOPC’s most popular servers are for legacy DCS systems like Foxboro AW50, Fisher-Rosemount RNI and Bailey INFI-90.  And new servers are still being written like the GE Mark V and the Honeywell TDC3000.  Why just this week the Fisher-Provox Direct server was released.  Seems to me there are a lot of folk hanging on to what is working for them.

On the other hand, Everything Old is New Again as they say.  All these systems have migration paths to shiny new models, which are typically more PC integrated and targeting Enterprise Integration.  Even OPC UA would be considered the next generation of connectivity.   With all the OPC UA news and the flurry of activity around the OPC UA SDK releases, it’s clear that there are plenty of folks looking to move on to the next great thing too.

For all those out there with legacy DCS systems installed, what’s the plan with respect to OPC?  Will the hardware be migrated up to the latest vendor version and assume that OPC is part of the new system?  Will the legacy stuff be connected into newer systems using the OPC we know and love today?  Or are people out there looking for native OPC UA servers to bridge the old and shiny new in one big step?